


Sad Tale's Best for Winter

by mercutios



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Family, Gen, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 09:32:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5492282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercutios/pseuds/mercutios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosette's past is catching up with her after she and Valjean leave the convent. She cannot cope, so her adopted father tries to comfort her with some of the same advice he has been offered over the years. Cosette tries her best to learn and grow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sad Tale's Best for Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miscellany (raisealittlehale)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisealittlehale/gifts).



Cosette wakes up screaming.

Not fully coherent, she registers a ghastly sound like the wind in some demonic storm. As she comes to, she realizes that the noise is tearing from her own mouth. Her lungs burn and her eyes sting with tears she has cried in her sleep.

She clamps her mouth shut and pulls the blanket up over her chin, embarrassed by her condition. Of course, it’s far too late. Toussaint and Valjean are awake; Cosette hears Toussaint bustling around in the next room (she imagines that she can hear the older woman fretting in her mind).

However, Valjean bursts into Cosette’s room first, with sleep-tousled hair and terrified eyes focused on the young girl. He rushes to the side of her bed and drops to his knees in his haste to comfort her.

“What is it, Cosette?”

“Papa… nothing, a nightmare. A bad dream. Nothing to be worried about,” she says, but there is no disguising the shudder in her voice.

Valjean reaches out and wipes at a wet patch on her cheek. “You were crying. I heard you.” He whispers, trying to calm her down.

“I’m fine. I woke up now.”

Her father brushes a piece of chestnut hair away from her face. “Cosette. There was as much hurt in your cries as any that I have ever heard.”

The tenderness in his voice is almost confusing to her, and the tears well up in her eyes as she sits up in bed and looks her papa in the face. “I dreamed about the inn again.” Only when she acknowledges her circumstances does she realize that she is shivering. Her thin nightdress cannot protect from the chill outside and the shaking caused by her own fear.

Valjean sighs- not a noise of exasperation, but of understanding. “Oh, my little lark, you are no longer there. You are safe, with Toussaint and me. We left the inn behind years ago.”

“Papa, you do not understand! It has been years, but it has not left me! I fear that it will never leave me entirely-“ Cosette breaks off in the middle of her protestation and collapses into tears again as she pulls her knees under her. Valjean sits up on his knees and rests his hands on her shoulders, trying to get the fourteen-year-old to look at him, but her weeping is inconsolable. Eventually he enfolds her in his arms, and her small, hiccuping frame feels to him no larger than a babe.

“I learned from a very wise man that sometimes, if you wish to be understood, you must confess your heart.”

For several minutes, the only noise in the room is Cosette’s crying. Toussaint arrives at the door, arms folded in consternation, and exchanges a concerned look with Valjean, but she quickly realizes that the situation is being dealt with adequately. She smiles at him and he offers her a quick nod and weary smile in return.

Looking up at her adopted father, Cosette blinks away tears from her eyes and sniffles. “Why do I have all these horrible memories? Why must I remember all these terrible things? The sisters at the convent told me to trust in God for an explanation, but I do not have an explanation. Why, Papa? Why do I have these dreams?”

Valjean shifts his embrace to a more comfortable position. “Tell me more, my daughter.”

“I was so young when you took me from the inn, but I still remember so much of that horrible place. The smell, Papa, the smell! It was like the refuse of humanity! And Madame, who always struck me and forced me to work. When I was at the inn and it was cold there like it is here, in the winter, my hands would split from the carrying and scrubbing and working. I was only small.”

Her father strokes her hair and remains silent.

“I might not have minded such labor if they had loved me. But Papa, it was not love! It was not servanthood! It was hatred! It was slavery! I can barely remember it without returning again to weeping!”

Valjean makes a noise of discontent deep in his throat, and Cosette startles. The words tumbling from her mouth halt abruptly. Bemused, she stares at him for a few moments, until he realizes that she is looking at him with blue eyes that seem to be older and wiser than her fourteen years.

“I-“ he chokes out. Cosette waits. “I understand that feeling. Cosette, I know what it is like to be a slave.” Valjean contemplates telling the rest of his story. Would it help her? Would it be comforting to know that her father spent years of his life in the chain gangs, abused and battered only for trying to feed his sister’s children? Would she be able to find the connection between his story and hers?

No, he decides, it would not be beneficial. Cosette is too worried about others already. Let her care foremost for herself.

Fortunately, Cosette buries her face into Valjean’s nightshirt, uninterested in the rest of the story. For her, it is enough to know that someone can comprehend her struggles. Hot tears leak from her eyes and trickle down her face, but she no longer tries to hold them back. She cries freely- she wants to cry out every bad memory, every shred of pain, every scrap of anger that lingers in her soul. She wants to cry and cry until there is no more hurt, no more memories of the inn, and no more tears.

But Cosette knows far too well that forgetting her history is impossible.

“Papa, how can I live with all of this?”

“I have learned to look towards the future, and to forgive, and to confess all to God.”

“How? How can I look forward when my past causes so much pain? How can I forgive? What do I have to confess when I am a victim of hatred? None of this makes sense, none of it-“ Cosette dissolves again into tears, and Valjean rocks her gently while she sobs.

“Cosette, you have suffered terrible things, but you cannot let them determine the person you will grow to be.”

“But I can’t forgive them for all the atrocities they’ve done!” Her tears are almost angry now; she sets her face in hard lines as she remembers the day-to-day horrors she faced in the inn. Fetching water from a frozen well, walking barefoot through the slop, being hit by Madame…

“It’s hard. It’s taken me years upon years to learn how to forgive.”

“I can’t! I can’t just choose to say that everything they did is suddenly all right!”

“Life is full of difficult choices- indeed, living is one of the hardest things to do. I have learned that. Your mother knew that very well. And it seems, you are learning this now.”

“Why did my mother ever give me up to that awful place?” she whispers. Even though she cannot change her past, she can still regret its ever occurring.

“Just like they did not love you, they did not love your mother, either. She thought she was doing what was best for you, but they had lied to her. You cannot blame her, Cosette. She loved you more than anything in the world.”

“But she abandoned me!”

“She did not want to. She loved you… she still loves you.”

Cosette allows her heart to soften just a little. She cannot forgive, yet; the pain is still too great. However, in the arms of her papa, she knows she is safe and warm and loved- there is no chance that the inn’s inhabitants can hurt her here.

Maybe, she thinks, she can learn forgiveness. Maybe then the nightmares will leave altogether.


End file.
